I arrived in Pensacola from Guam on August 18th. Christy and the kids had already been here since the end of June. Then on September 15th, Ivan came to town - Hurricane Ivan that is. The officials call it a category 3 storm, and it was a direct hit to Pensacola. In fact, we live it what is considered the ground zero area. We went through Supertyphoon Pongsona in Guam Decmeber of 2002, but the damage from this one was a lot more severe and more personal. Here are some before and after pictures of the damage.
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My friend Russ and I set out early in the morning while the strong winds from Ivan were still blowing to assess damage to our houses. This is the 2-lane highway that runs in front of our subdivision. We couldn't drive to our house as there was too much debris in the road, including entire sections of houses in the road. |
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The first thing I encountered were sections of the fence scattered about and two pine trees leaned over onto our house. I also took note of the garage door folded underneath and realized that it wasn't going to be pretty. |
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As I walked around the front of the house I see the large tree that was in front of Miranda's bedroom is pushed over and large sections of the roof are stripped of shingles and bare wood is showing. I was glad that of the three trees we had fall down, not one did any damage to the house. |
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I entered the front door of our house and see the ceiling is down in the dining room. The pink stuff is the blown in insulation. Later, our friend Jen says it looks as though a pink flamingo exploded in our house. |
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I move into the kitchen and here is what I saw... |
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The kitchen was the worst damage suffered. All of the cabinets had to be replaced. Since we were doing that Christy thought we naturally had to get a new refridgerator, stove, and built-in microwave. |
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After Russ and I returned to the shelter (his house was fine by the way) we discovered that our van, which was parked on the west side of the shelter to avoid storm damage was indeed damaged by the layer of small rocks that were on top of the building. All but three of the windows were broken out and the other three had rock chips in them. |
